Web syndication formats, such as the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) protocol, Atom protocol, or other branches of the RSS protocol, enable media content to be transmitted from disparate endpoints using a very simple specification to describe the data for others to consume. In a simplistic example, suppose user-A wishes to share his photography collections with other users. The user-A would publish his/her photographs over a RSS channel. A user-B may subscribe to the RSS channel to receive photographs from the user-A.
Frequently, the users, either the original publisher or subscribers, of web syndication items may wish to update the feed item(s) and publish the updated version(s). For example, in user-A's situation, one or more photographs may be wrong or there are typographical errors in describing parts of the photographs. Instead of submitting the updated photographs as a new item or “an episode”, the publisher may wish to update the existing syndication item. Likewise, the subscriber may wish to contribute and provide updates to an existing item.
Currently, the publisher is unable to provide an update. Also, even if an update is possible, the subscriber (e.g., user-B) is unable to determine whether the subscriber has already received the updated syndication item. In addition, current RSS protocol is unable to provide a synchronous update of web synchronization items because current RSS metadata associated the web syndication item fails to account for such synchronization. Furthermore, existing RSS protocol does not provide uniform or universal clock to inform publishers or subscribers how current a particular web syndication item is.